Analysis of the gap between new hotel technologies and guests' ability to use them

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze the gap between the new technologies that the hotels offer to their guest and their ability or knowledge to use these technologies. With this study the hoteliers will be able to identify when exist a digital divide risk with their guests. Since, nowadays do not always match the technologic services offered by the hotels and the guest technological needs and abilities. This gap will be detect by the analysis of the hotel and of the guest based on the three main variables that affect the digital divide.

To develop this study, firstly, a deductive theoretical part of the research question has been done, by analyzing the background of the digital divide, detecting and analyzing his main variables and an analyzing the technological services offered in the lodging industry. Secondly, to develop the fieldwork, a quantitative technique was used by collecting secondary data and using the sampling technique.

Once analyzed the data collected it was possible to conclude that an hotelier can detect the gap between the guest technological domain and the technology offered by the hotel. In addition to that, it was possible to find out that the digital divide has three main variables, which are the geographic, generation and economic variable and also was possible to classify the hotels and guests based on these variables. Besides, it has been found out that the digital divide it is bigger when a guest is traveling and staying in a hotel of his or her same country than when is traveling to another country of their culture or continent. In addition, after the analysis of the results it can be also concluded that the economic variable it is very influential in the digital divide.

Afterwards, some recommendations and further work were pointed out in order to continue improving on the detection of the digital divide on the lodging industry.